WebRunner 0.3 packaged as a Mac OS X App Bundle

Posted June 16th, 2007 by 20after4
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Tonight I threw together a Mac OS X package based on Mark Finkle's "WebRunner" code (Version 0.3.)

Everything looks good on my G4 PowerMac but I don't have any other environment to test this with. I believe that it requires XULRunner 1.8.1.3 XULRunner 1.9a7pre to be installed in the default location (/Library/Frameworks/XUL.Framework/) though another version might work.

I would appreciate any feedback on this as I have minimal experience with MacOS packaging. I intend to use this experience as the basis for a tutorial on MDC and the finished app bundle will make a nice example for other developers to learn from.

If you manage to test this please let me know whether it worked along with the versions of XULRunner and OS X that you tested. Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide.

Update: I created an icon that you might like to use for webrunner, however, I can imagine using several instances of webrunner for several different webapps. In that case it would be really cool if there were a way to generate a custom version of the icon for each unique webrunner application. More on this idea later.....

Update 2: I am writing up an article with details of how this was done. You can read what I have so far over here on the Mozilla Developer Center wiki.

Update 3: New version: here

Related Project:
WebRunnerX
AttachmentSize
WebRunnerX.dmg.zip282.28 KB
Images:
Updated WebRunner Icon

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You can use a private XULRunner also

On June 16th, 2007 Benjamin Smedberg (not verified) says:
You don't need to use a system-installed XULRunner. As documented on MDC you can ship the XUL.framework in Appname.app/Contents/Frameworks and it will prefer that one over the system-installed version. This is the recommended way to deploy XR applications for now, even though it means that each XR app will have to download XR separately.

Private XULRunner...

On June 16th, 2007 20after4 says:
Thanks for the comment Benjamin... I know a private XULRunner is possible, however, that's 16MB+ to download in order to support an app that's <500kb.... I didn't think that the bloat was justified since this was just a simple experiment with WebRunner and other mozpad developers (who likely have XULRunner already) are the current target audience. If there is demand for this in any way then I will work with mfinkle to get this up on his site along with the other WebRunner packages (and with an included XULRunner if that is the best way to go) By the way - the current implementation of shared XUL framework seems to be working fairly well, is there some danger with sharing XULRunner that I am overlooking? And do you know why XULRunner is so huge on Mac OS X? Is the extra weight caused by "universal binary" overhead?

I'm definitely interested in

On June 28th, 2007 J.J. Zhuang (not verified) says:
I'm definitely interested in a self contained xulrunner browser for running special webapps. Would love to see a formalized private browser framework. Thanks for taking the first step!

First step

On July 2nd, 2007 20after4 says:
I don't deserve any credit for taking the first step but I too would like to see this become a more general framework that could be more easily adopted by those who find it useful. For more on the history of WebRunner, I recommend that you check out Mark Finkle's blog at http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2007/03/site-specific-browser-using-webrunner/

OSX Xulrunner app menus a no show

On July 9th, 2007 Bill Orcutt (not verified) says:
Hi- Thanks for your work on this topic- its a subject I have much interest in. Please continue. I tried the Webrunner download and I'm seeing the same issue that's affecting my own work- the app menu is missing. Only the top node is visible and when clicked there are no menu items available. Its neccesary to force quit since there's no quit menu item. Everything else appears OK. I assume it works for you? Is anyone else seeing this? Can anyone suggest a fix? I'm on PPC G4, OS X 10.4.1, XULRunner 1.8.1.3 (downloaded from the contrib builds) thanks -Bill

Menu Entries

On July 10th, 2007 20after4 says:
I am not currently experiencing this problem, however, I have seen it in the past. I believe that it was connected with certain XULRunner versions. I'm looking into it and I will get back to you with more information as soon as I can isolate the problem.

Menu Entries

On July 10th, 2007 Bill Orcutt (not verified) says:
It does seem to be connected to the 1.8.1.3 contrib build- I found a 1.8.0.9 build and both webrunner and my own work seem fine with it.

Thanks

On July 11th, 2007 20after4 says:
Thanks for bringing up the bug. I had seen it several times and never quite isolated the problem. It definitely seems to be a flaw in the 1.8.1.3 contrib build. Thanks again for pointing it out!

more info!

On July 19th, 2007 ben (not verified) says:
hi there there's a lot, lot LOT more info required to make people understand this. People like me. I consider myself tech savvy, yet it took me half an hour of spelunking around the internet, before I got even vaguely close to being able to choose the destination URI! The page I landed on was this, and it was the comments that helped the most. Not a lot, but more than the article itself: http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2007/07/webrunner-05-now-with-more-power/ ..even then, when I copied gmail.webapp out of the application package, and tried to associate /webapp files with the application.....WebRunnerX launches...and still goes straight to the Mozilla.org page. So, I did the commandline: ./WebRunnerX\ 0.5.app/Contents/MacOS/xulrunner -uri www.gmail.com (which is ugly) And got gmail....rendering oddly...and with Aqua-widgets. Aqua widgets that give you menus that can be selected, but can't be pulled down. So, a poor experience for what I was hoping was going to be a great experience. Can I change or fix the rendering issue? Do you have documentation on how to use, configure, and tweak the Mac version? ...best wishes...

re:Bad Experience

On July 20th, 2007 20after4 says:
Hi Ben, I'm sorry that you had a less than wonderful experience with webrunner. I updated the link above to point to the latest trunk nightly build of XULRunner, I believe that will work a lot better than the version I was wrongly recommending. Also, there is a nice new OSX Release from the original author (Mark Finkle) that includes XULRunner. You might have more luck with that version, which you can download from Mark's weblog.